TVD Recommends: Humble Home at Bunbury Music Festival

Word on the street is that there’s a new music festival in town. I know what you’re thinking. “Another music festival? Whatever.” Well, lay that thought to the side because Bunbury Music Festival, hosted by the great city of Cincinnati, isn’t just another music festival. 

Boasting a lineup that is pretty impressive for an inaugural year, the festival is about to take place this upcoming weekend. Over here at TVD we thought, what better way to get you jazzed up for it than to introduce you to some of the acts that will be gracing its six stages?

Our first featured act to feast your ears upon is a local from Cleveland. The band is none other than Humble Home, a four-piece that comprises Nick Wise (vocals/guitar), Matt Hectorne (guitar/backup vocals), Jeff Sutton (bass/omnichord), and Anthony Foti (drums). These guys have been gaining speed and evolving their sound quite steadily. The first time my ears caught them, they were doing something far more conservative and quiet at the Grog Shop. I knew then they were a band to watch because they had this quiet power that seeped in slowly. The second time I heard them, they were performing an acoustic set at Brite Winter Fest. That set didn’t lack anything—save for amps, of course—but it was my most recent encounter with the band at Weapons of Mass Creation Fest that blew my hair back as the boys came at the crowd strong with a heavy dose of brazen rock.

The band agrees that the sound has changed a lot since they began. “We started as kind of a minimalist indie-folk sound, and now it’s more of a high energy rock with some folk elements in there, and it’s more catchy, too, so there’s a little bit of pop as well,” singer Nick Wise said.

Of the band’s inception, drummer Anthony Foti explained,”Nick and I kind of grew up together. Our families were friends, and we were involved in the some of the same church communities so we kind of knew each other. My previous band used to play around town, and we played a show with Matt and Jeff’s old band. Both of those bands broke up, so Matt and Jeff gave me a call to see if I wanted to jam, so we did that. Then Matt and Nick started working together, and they started playing music. So, the guy that I grew up with started playing with the dudes I had just met, and we all started playing from there.”

There’s something really admirable about a band that is inspired by community and collaboration, and Humble Home is one of those bands. You can hear it in the compositions that they create; they’re cohesive and composed in a manner that shows deep appreciation and intelligence regarding instrumentation and true composition. The band’s been diligently working on a new album, In Our Sleep, which is being recorded at Dangerhouse Studios in Cleveland.

“The album is coming together really smoothly. We’re capturing tones and sounds with our instruments that we’ve probably never captured before, but we’re really excited about it. Our sound is getting a lot bigger, a little more aggressive, but a lot more excessive and definitely a bit more catchy,” said Wise. “Even though we’ve been getting new tones and a different sound, we’ve been working on a lot of these songs for a better part of a year. I think we realize now that we’re comfortable with our parts of these songs, and that has helped for this experience to go really well.”

Foti chimed in, adding, “We’ve experimented with a few tracking techniques that we’ve tracked semi-live. Jeff and I tracked drums and bass together; we’re just playing around with different ways to get sound, and it’s been a really cool process. We’re just going with it and finding out what sounds good. Even when it’s taking on a new energy and it has attitude to it, you can still tell it’s us. It has a Humble Home flair to it.” The new album should be out early this fall, and you’re definitely going to want to get your hands on it.

They’re not pressing vinyl this time around, as it wasn’t quite in the budget, but they hope to in the future. “Three out of four of us have record players and listen to vinyl pretty regularly,” noted Foti, “so we’d love to make that happen.” They all concurred, however, that if you’re going to pick up some new records in Cleveland, you really should visit Music Saves.

Of Bunbury, the four-piece agreed that they’re excited to be on the lineup. “There’s a lot of cool bands on the bill for all three days, so it’s an honor to be playing with them,” bassist Jeff Sutton noted. They’re excited to hear Minus the Bear, Good Ol’ War, Death Cab for Cutie, and Pomegranates, to name a few.

Humble Home will take the CMC Stage from 1:30-2:15 on Friday, July 13th. Be sure to check them out! 

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